Tizen reached 1.0 only recently, but there's already a Tizen Conference going on - and during that conference, Samsung had a relatively barebones reference device running Tizen 1.0. The Handheld Blog has a seven minute video of the device in action, and while I'm very happy big players are investing in all these alternative platforms, I do have to wonder - how viable are they?

If the vendors that now pay for Android and WP think there is a market somewhere (South America or Africa) for really cheap devices then it could take off.
It all depends how well B2G, Tizen and/or OpenWebOS run on cheap devices.

HTML5-based apps seem like a weird approach, if cheap (slowish) devices are to be the goal...
Meltemi, supposedly based on Qt and a slimmed down version of N9 Meego, perhaps would be a better fit - but it will most likely remain Nokia-exclusive (though it still might very well be wildly successful, presumably being positioned as a successor to S40 - which is the dominant mobile phone platform on the planet)

Anyway, we more or less have this "single, well-supported open source mobile operating system, based on Linux" in the form of Android - and while OEMs have to pay for "Google experience" branding, that's not the only way: for example, look at Baidu Yi and OPhone forks.
And/or ZTE (already the 4th largest mobile phone maker), Huawei, and such should be perfectly able to make cheap enough "real" Android handsets. They already make quite inexpensive ones (check out ZTE Blade, and other models go lower), and such phones still mostly use Qualcomm SoCs, I believe - so "off the shelf" solutions for Android from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaTek (and check "Shanzhai" link) will lower costs further.
The Chinese will be more than happy to supply not only their exploding market with price-ranges required.
Also, I wonder what HTC and VIA might unveil (both are part of... VIA Group; VIA already has some ARM SoCs, though not for mobiles)

In all, probably what happened with personal computers, more or less. New OEMs largely taking over. And the myriad of disjointed platforms ultimately eclipsed by one (very few) dominant one, its momentum pushing the field forward (quickly matching niceties of any new would-be contenders ...recent story with RIM BB10?), prices down, making it more or less unmatched.

I agree, mass OEM producers are most specialized on cost cutting and they will go the path of least resistance when choosing the SW platform and that most likely means standardizing on some light modification of Android.
But Samsung is in other game now. They will keep investing in Tizen and use that to keep Google and Microsoft in check. Commoditizing APIs is a dream shared by both carriers, HW devs and developers (look how much effort is wasted in redoing the same SW for IOS, Android, Symbian, Java, Bada, WP and whatnot?). Even Google would probably benefit in the long term. Only Apple and Microsoft would be hurt with their developer locking abilities diminished.
The problem is, no feasible technical solution is in place. HTML5 is not going to be the answer until either I5 level of processing power is available in mobile devices within $100 price range or major performance boost in JS jit technology is around the corner, or some breaktrough in battery tech that would allow Intel to put I5 proper in a mobile phone. Given how many years it took Intel to reach that and that scripting lang. have been around for couple of decades with JIT work ongoing the last is only remotely likely proposition.

To be precise, QML is derived from JavaScript. But we are talking in general. Qt easily allows combining interpretive QML UI with native code backend. So the advised way is it to implement (potentially performance hungry) logic in C++, while the UI in declarative QML.

It's not stillborn though, since Qt has several serious participants (including KDE), and Nokia intends to use it heavily for their lower end devices, which are not polluted by MS yet.

I'm not sure about the viability of Tizen either but I also don't know much about Samsungs strategy with it either. So far I'm impressed that they've built their own OS rather than acquire a company that built one.

A video I just saw suggested that it'll target high end devices. For that to work out it'll need to come bundled with some very compelling software from the start and be marketed accordingly. So far that is something RIM doesn't even seem to be doing right. Not a surprise given that building your own killer applications is difficult and expensive.

They will get a decent release which could easily be a solid base to build a good developer and user community around and then they will just scrap it all and start from scratch again.

That's what happened with Maemo (including all the whole GTK-Qt and Maemo 6 nonsense). That's what happened with Meego. That is what is going to happen with Tizen.

The whole line is cursed.

I would like to see some more noise about Boot 2 Gecko... But Mozilla's incompetence is pretty well established. Lack of focus and lack of sustained marketing which leads to things just being forgotten...

Cool, love these open source projects for phones, makes a change from Android with it's "free" apps on an supposedly open source OS.
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I still use my N900 with Maemo CSSU, just wish development had gone forward rather than almost stopping...

I'm also wondering if it's a wise strategy at this point in the smartphone market.

Honestly, I don't really care how Tizen looks like. I'd rather avoid corporate controlled OSes. On the other hand, Tizen project serves a good cause - having open devices which can run normal (non Android) Linux is good. As far as device can run normal Linux, whether it's corporate Tizen, or community Nemo or any other distro it's already a win. So far vendors limit Linux adoption with side means, like not providing drivers and specs for their devices. Therefore the more Linux compatible devices - the better. So let Tizen give some kick to the market, may be it'll help more manufacturers to start supporting conventional Linux besides Android.

I have to conclude it would make far more sense for these parties to work together on a single, well-supported open source mobile operating system, based on Linux, incorporating ideas from the current myriad of disparate efforts.

This is reasonable, but when applied to committed community, not to corporate "parties". One should learn from history. Corporations give promises, and easily break them. Nokia was "solidly behind Meego", Intel was "committed to Meego no matter what". We know what happened. Do you really have more trust in Samsung for some reason? I don't. So if they make more devices - great, it helps. But the combined OS effort which you mentioned (software side of things) needs to be free of corporate control.

Community support is just too little to ensure OS viability in the break neck smartphone environment. They are simply moving too slow and lack UI competencies.
Look what happened with full OSS Openmoko, they had a year headstart before IPhone and haven't even managed to produce just a working phone basics, nevertheless working stable apis and killer apps.

There is no need to equate community driven development, and the lack of support. Some companies can actively support community projects. Or base their derivative works on them, and provide support for the final product. My point about community was related to those who are in charge of the project direction. I have more trust in communities who use open development model, than in corporations who develop and decide stuff totally in secret (Tizen development is not open at all, and community has no say in any decisions).

Mer project proposed to develop community driven Linux core, on which others can build final products. Plasma Active for example already use it for their upcoming Vivaldi tablet, and they have several companies who participate in Plasma Active work. Providing support can be viable, but at least they rely on something that won't likely to be dropped, because MS bribes one of the parties (like Nokia), or they suddenly have change of heart (like Intel).

You know, I really don't think that hardware evolves as quickly as you say. Or, more precisely, that it evolves fast enough to withstand whatever load software is going to put on it.

It's 2012, and Android and iOS still require lots of tweaking to reach the battery life and performance that Symbian used to reach on similarly-priced hardware in its days, in spite of benefitting from the latest advance in processing and battery technology.

Even Microsoft, which used to be the biggest proponent of heavy software that is "optimized" for the latest hardware, seem to take a leaner approach to software development these days.

Yup, just like those shitty commodity PCs became tangled in their obsolescence, and workstations are still thriving...

Plenty of people (often those to which costs matter a great deal) have yet to adopt Android and such (but probably Android, typically), bringing with them still massive advantages & dominance from economies of scale. All while battery tech hardly improves.

Depends on a combination of factors, with the first and most important one being that of gaining critical mass with carriers that love to have control over what can/can't be done with phones, and their OSes.

The second one is developers: if they don't perceive enough market (made possible by carrier approval) they'll run for the hills.

The third one is the users: if the carriers don't come out with phones in cooperation with the developers and seeding them to some degree (however that's arranged) there won't be nearly enough apps to explain to potential users why they should pick this phone (or the OS, at least) over any other one, because they want to play Angry Birds or use Facebook.

Then, of course: there's also hardware makers and what information they make available about their hardware, and if they'll put or make feasible to install this on their phones. But, largely, this needs to be a cooperation at all times between the hardware makers, the OSS developers, AND the carriers, or this is doomed to being just another (maybe) pretty face lost in the confusion and uncaring world about another mobile platform. Sure, some computer geeks could buy into it, but there aren't nearly enough to make this remotely viable, because that's just a hobby in the grand scheme of things. If Microsoft has to fight hard to get any traction despite being who they are and their resources and money they can use to pay off hardware makers and carriers as they see fit, what logical reason is there for something just coming out and likely not feature-complete is going to have a snowball's chance in hell against iOS and Android and Windows Phone, heck, even RIM's latest mutations based on rock-solid QNX for the kernel stuff?

Conclusion: this will be relegated to hobby OS status, much like Haiku and BeOS have been, for much the same reasons, only more extreme.

But I'll use a Tizen or boot2gecko phone over Android even if they aren't as good.

As much as I like Android compared to every other phone OS I'd rather use a truly free OS. The problem with Tizen is that the SDK has a proprietary licence so for the moment boot2gecko is winning for me.

I don't really care about the fragmentation/focus debate; it's Linux, fragmentation happens. But what I really care about is multi-tasking as good as WebOS coming to every mobile OS. WebOS sucks because there are no apps. Everything else sucks because it's not WebOS.

I always hate it when people question alternatives. Be happy there are alternatives, they are not popular or probably won't become popular but who cares?

There are people working on ReactOS, is that ever gonna be used for production purposes? And what aobut the 99999 different Linux distributions, why not make one really good one?

And yes Tizen might not become big but it's a nice project to check the possibilities. Other than that, letting your competition know that you are always working on something new keeps them sharp and that's better for us cosumers.

I always hate it when people question alternatives. Be happy there are alternatives, they are not popular or probably won't become popular but who cares?

There are people working on ReactOS, is that ever gonna be used for production purposes? And what aobut the 99999 different Linux distributions, why not make one really good one?

And yes Tizen might not become big but it's a nice project to check the possibilities. Other than that, letting your competition know that you are always working on something new keeps them sharp and that's better for us cosumers.

But equally what makes or breaks a platform these days is the ecosystem that developers target for both free (paid for via advertisements) and paid for applications. Both models require economies of scale of the operating system for these said developers to jump on board and make their applications available where as fragmentation undermines this issue. This fragmentation can occur in two ways, the first is version fragmentation (Android is an example with an inconsistent update and upgrade policy resulting developers having to work around version specific bugs) and fragmentation of operating systems where developers simply avoid those alternatives thus entrenching the status quo.

Don't get me wrong, we really do need an alternative given how crappy Android is when it comes to long term support of updates and upgrades plus the horrible slowness of these upgrades and updates getting to consumers but Samsung having 3-4 platforms doesn't help the situation. What Samsung should have done was take their existing Bada and scale it up - I would have also replaced the Linux kernel with something like a BSD so that drivers etc. don't need to be re-invented every time the operating system is upgraded. There should be no need for months of testing if you've already written your drivers already for Linux - it should be just a matter of recompiling the kernel, if you require re-testing of your driver with a new version then obviously something is very broken in how things are designed.

What Samsung should have done was take their existing Bada and scale it up - I would have also replaced the Linux kernel with something like a BSD so that drivers etc. don't need to be re-invented every time the operating system is upgraded.

No known bada device has the Linux variant - they all run on top of RTOS.
Samsung here "migrates" to Linux - they don't see what you mentioned as that much of a problem, and/or they prefer Linux for other reasons (and it's not like they don't know about BSDs - copyright notices on bada devices show they use some code from FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD)